1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a dispensing device.
2. Description of the Related Art
For example, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2009-291103 discloses a dispensing device configured to discharge to a culture container liquid such as a culture medium for culturing a cell and drawing in the liquid contained in the culture container.
The dispensing device of Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2009-291103, for example, draws liquid into a syringe and discharges the liquid in the syringe, using pressure generated by a pump. For example, when drawing in or discharging a liquid, a driving voltage associated in advance with a target flow rate of a liquid is supplied to a pump so that the liquid will be passed at the target flow rate. However, for example, in the case where the pump has deteriorated with time and/or a warm-up operation being a low load operation of the pump has not been performed for a predetermined time period, the flow rate of the liquid may vary although a driving voltage associated in advance with the target flow rate of the liquid is supplied to the pump. Further, for example, a paint discharge rate control device of Japanese Examined Patent Application Publication No. 4-3266 determines when discharging paint from a nozzle, a correction value for fixing the flow rate of the paint subsequently discharged to the target flow rate based on the mean value of the flow rates measured by a flowmeter during a predetermined time period. However, this paint discharge rate control device, for example, is not capable of determining a plurality of correction values corresponding to a plurality of target flow rates by a single determination of the correction value. Thus, even if a dispensing device draws in or discharges a liquid, for example, with the technique of Japanese Examined Patent Application Publication No. 4-3266 applied thereto, for example, the flow rate of the liquid cannot reach the target flow rate in the case where the target flow rate is changed in each suction or discharge, which results in varying the flow rate of the liquid. Thus, for example, liquid may adhere to the filter provided between the syringe and the pump, due to the varying flow rate when drawing the liquid into the syringe. Further, the liquid may splatter around the dish for the dispensed liquid and contaminate the surroundings, due to the varying flow rate of the liquid discharged from the syringe. Further, for example, there may be difficulty in keeping constant the working time taken to repeat drawing and discharging a predetermined volume of liquid for a predetermined number of times.